1965 Directed by Frederick de Cordova
Bob Holcomb will do anything to stop his daughter JoJo from tying the knot with her lazy boyfriend, even move her all the way to Sweden! But once they're "safely" out of the country, JoJo falls for a sly Swedish playboy.
Amor al estilo sueco, Lecciones de amor en Suecia, Schweden - Nur der Liebe wegen, Уж лучше в Швецию!, تعطیلات در سوئد, Leçons d'amour suédoises, Lliçons d'amor a Suècia, Svedala, alla gånger
USANR
USA
Bob Hope & Tuesday Weld go to Sweden, get horny for Swedish people and then cock block each other.
Boy meets girl, boy meets girl's father, father kidnaps girl to Sweden, girl meets sleazy boy, father learns to appreciate idiotic but at least honest original boy. Tale as old as time.
It has its moments, but it's overlong and not as funny as I'd hoped. On the plus side, it's got Frankie Avalon singing the title song (which is actually kinda good), Tuesday Weld being pretty funny, and Bob Hope on the back of a dirtbike.
"I hardly slept a wink last night."
"Well you'll have to talk to my doctor. He can't sleep either."
In terms of the intersection of a Venn diagram of Bob Hope and Frankie Avalon movies, I guess this hit the mark.
The screen rehabilitation of Bob Hope's formerly grasping, cowardly, and most of all lascivious movie persona proceeds apace in this umpteenth recasting of the comedian as a suburban shnook, this time saddled with a teenage daughter. And while the sixties weren't always a kind decade to the king of the one-liners, the lip-service his once defiantly unprincipled and self-interested slickster now had to pay to morals, standards, decency and the like is fortunately belied by his characters' actual behavior, which can still be fairly low-down, conniving, and refreshingly rotten.
Hope's oil and/or auto exec. accepts a transfer to of all places Sweden in order to get his nubile young daughter Tuesday Weld away from the bohemian romantic interest of Frankie…
This one was pretty out of place in 1965 when Beatlemania was in full force. Bob Hope plays a harried father who is upset that his pretty daughter (Tuesday Weld) is interested in an irresponsible boy. Clean cut Frankie Avalon (then nearing 30) plays the boy, who rides a motorcycle with a helmet and dresses neatly. Dina Merrill and Jeremy Slate also appear. This is basically what some old square screenwriters thought the 60s youth culture was about. But watching it now, as an old movie, it is a harmless, cheerful bit of simplicity sustained by Bob Hope's irresistably corny one-liners.
Dina Merrill looks stunning in a complete rainbow array of outfits & Tuesday Weld’s opera look was a lot of fun. It was harmless enough, but I found the youths to be as annoying as Bob did & then it took an almost SA turn towards the end which was not amusing.
I'm not exactly sure who the audience would have been for this film back then. Was it for the parents or the teens? The movie kinda depicts some interesting cultural and gendered double standards (if that's what you'll call these). Also, it's interesting to see the generational conflicts are still pretty much the same. Or none of these themes I mentioned are actually interesting at all, and I've lost my mind (a real possibility).
Should you watchie? There were some pretty funny lines thrown around. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It's not a blast to watchie, but not a disaster.
Film #14 of my 2020 - Clearing Out My DVD Case Initiative.
*****
Ouch. Mostly dreadful.
It's one-liner after another one-liner. And not even good ones. One groaner after another. Like a bad vaudeville act that never really gets going.
The plot is silly and paper-thin. A dad (Bob Hope) doesn't want his daughter (Tuesday Weld) dating a hipster hepcat (Frankie Avalon). So he tricks his daughter into a trip to Sweden to get her away from the dude. She, of course, falls for a Swedish dude who turns out to be a ladykiller and is much worse than the American guy. So the dad brings the American kid over to try to win his daughter back. In the meantime, the dad also falls in love with a Swedish lady.
Lah dee dah.
It's all very light and easy... but ultimately very empty. I wanted to like this generational comedy, but it just didn't work for me. Ah wells...
This really isn't very good, but I always find it funny to see Hollywood's impression of Sweden. And there's Tursday Weld. I had a huge crush on her back in the day.
I noticed John Qualen in the cast list. He's one of those actors who often used to play a Swede with the most horrible Swedish accent. So imagne my surprise when he hardly utters a word here. There are some other bit players who attempt to speak Swedish, though. I have never understood why Hollywood couldn't find bit players who actually were Swedes. Well, that goes for pretty much any foreign bit parts, usually played by actors who didn't master the language.
Not one of Bob Hope's better films.
"Look at them, starin' at each other like they were two television sets."
There are a few TV jokes in this; another, where Bob, running into people's hotel rooms in search of his daughter, sees a woman crying on a bed while her husband eats and watches an old cowboy film on television, feels like a premonition of David Cronenberg's Shivers, but this is weak stuff compared to the Ballardian frissons of Bachelor in Paradise, or even the oddities of The Road to Hong Kong and Call Me Bwana. Here, we find Hope Enterprises asking "movies or TV?," and already knowing the answer. Hope would see out the 60s costarring with Jackie Gleason and Phyllis Diller; here, he's "Bob Holcomb,"…
Watched on Tubi.
This was odd.
It feels like it was made for TV.
For a movie that's supposed to be set in Sweden, it takes 29min to get there.
Bob Hope looks pretty good for being 62 years old in this.
Tuesday Weld is lovely, but she called Bob Hope "Daddy" one too many times.
Frankie Avalon at one point tells his new girlfriend: "She's (his ex) just a pint, you're a full quart." All of his songs for this film are god awful.
I know that nobody will ever watch this movie and then read this review, but if they do I wonder if that same person also constantly heard the notes of "Everybody Loves Somebody" in the score for this film.
